Mittwoch, 19. September 2012

Obama vs. Romney: Hail to the Chief - Obama!

On which level did the Grand Old Party (GOP) end up that she nominated a guy like Mitt Romney who dislikes half of his own countrymen because they are not so well off like he is? With his speech before a bunch of super rich, Romney let the cat out of the bag. Obama voters, which make up fifty per cent of the American constituency, are not only regarded as lost for the Republican Party but also considered welfare scroungers. It was not his job to take care of these people, so Romney. This kind of social Darwinism came to the fore by a secretly produced video at one of Romney’s fund-raising dinners that cost 50.000 US-Dollars for each participant and was released by the magazine “Mother Jones”. 

Romney presented himself not only as the prototype of predatory capitalism without social responsibility but also as an obedient proxy for the Israeli position towards the Palestinians. In earlier statements he has promised that he as US President would do nothing that the Israeli government would not approve of; in his infamous speech before his billionaire supporters he went a step further. He accused the Palestinians of not being interested in peace with Israel, and “a pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish”. “I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes, committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel, and these thorny issues, and I say. There is just no way.” 

If Romney had the slightest clue, he had already recognized that the sole rejectionist parties in the Middle East are Israel and its US supporter. Looking at his radical neoconservative “brain” trust one can understand this kind of unrealistic talk. It is an Israeli created myth that Palestinians “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”, like the former Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban used to say. But the real rejectionists are the different Israeli governments as the book “Israeli Rejectionism” by Zalman Amit and Daphna Levit shows. The publication of the so-called “Palestine papers” also reveals that the former Israeli foreign minister Zipi Livni rejected every Palestinian concession as not going far enough that the Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat replied frustrated: “The only thing I cannot do is convert to Zionism.” The former head of the Shin Bet, Yuval Diskin, not only drew Netanyahu’s wrath on himself calling him and defense Minister Ehud Barak “messianic” in their attitude towards Iran but also because he accused the Netanyahu government of rejecting peace with the Palestinians. 

This series of mishaps by Romney were a godsend to the Obama camp. Obama himself enjoyed Romney’s remarks to the fullest by generously saying that he as President had to learn representing the whole country. In the inauguration speech, every US-President pledges solemnly to work for the whole of the American people. Except Romney! Other awkward statements by Romney were aptly characterized by Obama by saying: “Governor Romney shoots before he aims.” 

Perhaps the Romney camp has not grasped the fundamental mistake he has made. Romney sinned against the most important idiom of the so-called American Dream: Man forges his own destiny. According to Romney, this ideology seems only valid for the few who made it like he himself but not for every US American citizen for which this dream was invented. Romney’s “shining city on a hill” is only a comfortable place for the one per cent of the American tycoons. 

As a foreign political observer, I am flabbergasted by the political selection process of a nation of over 300 million inhabitants that produces such a politically green candidate. Perhaps I should not be so surprised. After all, the candidates for the US Empire are selected by the dominant political interest groups. Against their will, nobody can become president of the United States of America. George W. Bush was already a political catastrophe; how does it happen that the Republicans could have sunk even deeper? Romney does not talk of “benign conservatism” anymore, like George W. did, he favors a Darwinistic like capitalism, which only rewards the rich and the “strong”. Does his Mormon creed teach him that? Therefore, the argument has to be repudiated that the American nation has to come to terms with a Mormon president like the WASP nation had to come to grips with the catholic president John F. Kennedy. The great difference between the two is that Catholicism comes along with a social doctrine that regards the economic situation of the needy. To depreciate half of the American people as not worthy of taking care would probably never crossed Kennedy’s mind.

On November 6th, the American people have only one choice: the Nobel Peace Prize Warrior Barack Hussein Obama.

Photo credits.

First published here and here.